Sorry for the late post, I ended up getting caught up with work on Elysium and then sorting through the NPC data so I could present the findings and of course answer some of the NPC related Q&As I’ve received. So, here’s a progress summary, the findings and then the Q&As.

Work on Elysium was actually pretty decent this week. It took a bit of work, but I’ve greatly improved the status message system, and reduced it by nearly a hundred lines of now useless shit. Instead of several exchangeable sentences where each part that can be given a status message on, they’ve been reduced to just a few lines that have tons of exchangeable parts. The result will be exactly the same on the outside, but with the added bonus of being more code friendly as well as vastly increased the possible outputs without me having to write any of the outcomes manually. I’ve also set it up to keep naming conventions between update messages, as well as some silly but enjoyable stuff that changes the name color of the player and npcs according to their alignment and other factors. That way messages from multiple sources can be distinguished from the other source just as the dialog has been setup. Also officially implemented narrative switching into the options as well as the new, new game setup sequence. That’s about it for new stuff (ignoring the incomplete new game scene rewrites and additional scenes), the rest of the progress was more general conversion and boring shit, so, moving on.

Anyways, for those who don’t know, last week I started polling and surveying my community as well as 4chan for their preferences and ideas on what kind of NPC personality tropes they enjoy (particularly of the waifu/husbando variety, even if that won’t be a big focus in this game, its still interesting to learn). So here are my preliminary findings. In the questionnaire, each trope was given a strongly dislike, dislike, neutral, like and strongly like options which would give that trope -2,-1,0,1 and 2 points for each vote in that section, respectively. I added up all the scores and the image at the left is how the personality traits line up. Some notes on the scoring, prudence and stern both received the largest amount of neutral votes, so they’re a bit off compared to the rest; in that same light, yandere was the most divisive with most votes either being strongly like, or strongly dislike. So take that for what you will.

When asked “Which do you value more, a wider variety of npcs for simple interactions or a small cast of complex NPC for companions”, 75% answered: “small cast with depth” over the 25% that answered “wide cast with variety”.

When asked “Given that they are not overly complex, how would you rate your interest in customizable NPCs” most users (48%), rated their interest at 5.

When asked “How would you rate your interest in the use of randomized NPCs to expand the variety of certain limited events”, most users (35%), rated their interest at 4.

As for the general strawpoll version, I polled here, on twitter as well as /d/ and /trash/ on 4chan. I received just over 1600 votes (note: each selection counts as a separate vote, so true sample size is likely far smaller). The results were essentially identical with no significant differences of note. I did notice an interesting trend though, these popular traits make of some notable tropes: the most popular tropes seemingly being “the naughty librarian/Sex nerd” trope and the “girl-next-door/ bakers daughter” trope.

So, I don’t know. I found this all pretty interesting. I don’t know just how much of it will influence my end decisions, but its great to see what people are looking for and this kind of data is helpful for anyone with creative projects, not just Elysium. Giving the survey, I left open a question/suggestion box and got quite a bit of feedback from you all as well as a good lump of NPC related questions as well as a few other questions, so I’ll be answering a handful of those below

Q: “Most of these types of games tend to be 95% female/futa with one or two male token characters thrown in. What kind of gender balance can we expect in Elysium. Further, what kind of balance of sexual orientation can we expect? “

A: I’d be lying if I said that being a heterosexual with little personal interest in males (even as the player) won’t have an effect on the game’s gender & orientation balance, but I feel that for the sake of realism (something Elysium strives for, relatively speaking) I will try to keep a somewhat reasonable mix of sexes, genders & orientations. Anything that functions for one sex, will work for the others and vice versa (unless otherwise physically impossible or otherwise realistically limited by the sex itself). I want the game to feel like its fully playable regardless of what sex you play as or what your orientation is. (if you look at the lords of elysium, it’s semi representative of what he balance will be like, we have 3 females, 1 futa, 1 trap, 2 males and 2 agender/non-humanoids) Of course there will be some npcs that will be strictly heterosexual, and some that’ll be strictly homosexual, but in general most will accept both sexes (not realistic, but it keeps things open to all play-styles)

Q: “Will NPCs be romancable, will we be able to romance multiple NPCs at the same time?”

A: Yes. I plan to implement a romance systems, that’ll work for both simple randomized npcs you meet in the wild as well as dedicated and more complex npcs. You will be able to romance multiple npcs, but not all npcs will get along, particularly if they discover they’ve been cheated on. Others will be more open to polygamy. Each will have their own personality sets and preferences, so it’ll really depend on who is involved.

Q: “Fenoxo games and similar games often have a theme of waifu collecting. Will Elysium share this aspect?”

A: I’ll give an uncertain no to that. I know that romancable npcs are very popular and filling up a camp with all your crushes is kind of par for the course with these things, which while fun, tends to become the focus of the game itself taking away from other aspects of the game, like exploring, transformation and events in general. I do plan to have romancable npcs, companion collecting and the like of course, but I don’t plan on it being the main focus of the game. Plus, there tends to be a lot neglected in NPC collecting as well, but it rarely takes into account that individual NPC’s preferences and personality and the fact that not all companions will be able to live together just because they like the player. Among a myriad of other meta issues. But that’s a whole different matter.

Q: “Will companions follow the player around and assist in combat in a tradition rpg party style?”

A: I want to say yes for that. I don’t have the systems setup for that just yet and it’ll likely be a while till I do, but that’s one of the reasons my entity system was being setup. There will have to be separate popout menus to mange them and it’ll likely end up a bit complex, so it’ll take some time to plan out how I’ll lay it out and make it work. But someday, defiantly.

A: Yes and no. Essentially I want my game to avoid psychic npcs, if they personally didn’t see you do something, weren’t told about it by you or an other npc, then they really shouldn’t know about your crimes or alligences. So, in theory, you could be part of chastia’s army of purity seekers, but date a hot válkosi demon girl on the side, without either party discovering your activities. Of course the larger the party, the more likely they will have spies, so there will be some cases of psychic npcs. lol

Q: “Have you thought about opening up a reddit for Elysium? Free Cities did and has received a lot more reliable feedback than when it was just on 4chan and the same would be likely for Elysium.”

A: I have thought about it, but with the current update drought, the last thing I want to do is advertise my game and bring in even more disappointed traffic. It’s the same reason I haven’t pulled out any funds from my patreon dontations, I just don’t feel that any of that should be engaged until this update finally breaks ground and we get back into the regular flow of things again. Once I finally finish this shit and get an update out I’ll certainly look into it though.

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Not for a while unfortunately. I’ve been swamped this week with finals and other matters and then Christmas week I work almost 60 hours due to the holiday rush. I don’t expect to have the update done until after news years at least. 2016 has just been an unbelievably bad year for me both in life and in game productivity I’m sorry to say.

Looking back though, every December to January period in general has been an update drought, but this is certainly the worst one yet. I’m really on edge with everything and I’m only getting an hour or two for Elysium every once in a while so hopefully once the holidays end and the semester is over things will calm their fucking tits and I can get something done again. lol

Unfortunately I get the feeling “prudence” is mixed in with the “pure” waifu-archetype and the fact that and customizeable NPCs are in the lacking half is fairly concerning.
There’s a massive lacking of that in Fenoxos (especially the newer one) where just about every character is “friends with benefits” and the ones that aren’t are off limits, and other similar games and it’s one of the reasons those don’t appeal to me at all.

However, the fact you mentioned romance in this eases that concern to some extent, means there’ll probably be at least one regardless of the results because if every character’s the Elysium bicycle, there’s no variety. Just have to hope either a personality matches up with the interest of fetish, or that NPC customization will be just as fleshed out as the players is.

In another of your posts I recall you mentioning “meeting your past lives bodies” or something of that nature, but would you be able to create more than one character and have them interact in that way?
Nigh limitless possibilities in that alone, because if you can’t find an NPC you like, the player could just make some themselves.
Seeing the interest in creating a party system if done right it could also be a fun new way to play the game by using this to make you start a game with a party of new characters and exploring Elysium that way, with several new characters instead of just the one.

That said, Slablands and this remain among the few games I’m waiting on.

Not everyone in Elysium will be a slut, I can guarantee that. There should be a decent number of characters to pick from that you might have to date and get to know before they’re ready for that sort of stuff. Not that sex with them won’t be unavailable, but a continued relationship with them not hating you for your actions might require a little more care.

Customizable npcs and the like are certainly something I want to explore, obviously they’re be a lot more difficult to make indepth and personal compared to a more persistent npc, but its something I want to try. In some ways, that could indeed include your old bodies, provided they survived and aren’t completely feral/mentally broken. But thats a slippery, buggy road, so we’ll have to see.

I’m glad you’re still here waiting on this molasses train, haha! Its always good to know that even if it’s going to be forever, there will be somebody out there ready to play the next update.

If I may make a suggestion, would another human awoken from the ship be an option for a customized npc? You could have it that the player can explore some of the ship and awaken another human (only one) later in the game (for instance, about a month after day one). Gender, easy enough, choose man or woman. To choose personality, it could just be choosing a simple bio of the person describing their past life (i.e. someone who has an aggressive personality could have a background of crime assaults and general violence, while someone with a “bookworm” personality would have a bio showing a reclusive life style). You can’t change them intially, but you can give them transformative items to change them later on. I know that this may be a nightmare to code, but this is only a suggestion. I, in no way, mean to add stress or disrespecting you.

I said “only one” because I felt that it would make it feel more unique and personal (“I can only make one, so I better make it count!”) to have only one. But, that is simply my opinion on the matter and I can see the appeal of such a thing. It is ultimately up to Atticus on if this is even an add on later on or not at all.
I must agree on the self-cest, though. It would be a little weird and narcissitic for me to essential be sleeping with myself.

I have been following this project for a while and I must say, you have quite the ambitions to commit to this large of a project. I find it admirable that you dedicated so much time and effort. And all of it shows in your work. It sucks that you have had such a **** year, but I hope that the next one pans out better than this one.

Now, I have a question. In the descriptions for the Lords in the pdf., it has a relationship for each of them between a player that is devoted to them. For some of them, it simply reads “open”. Does this mean that you plan on having some of the Lords be romanceable in some way or does it simply mean that you can improve your standings with them? I apologize if this has been answered elsewhere.

No, don’t worry, a lot of the lord info is up in there air and in general not all that well covered around the site (I’m actually working on a new survey related to them, to help clear up questions the community might have as well as in general get some ideas)

Some of the lords will in fact be romancable or at the very least can become close friends with. (admittedly it was quiet a long while ago that I wrote those, so I’m not fully sure what I meant by open for who, but in general, I feel they should all have some form of bonding available if not full romancable relationships)

Also, thank you for your kind words. I get obsessed with things. World building is my thing, I’ve done it a number of times, but this is the first time I’ve tried to make something of it and bring it to life. It’s been hellishly slow, but I’m far from finished and I want to bring these things to the world some day. :)

“…itself taking away from other aspects of the game, like exploring, transformation and events in general.” I agree. In those kind of game I really like to play with transformations and build my character with them. That why I prefer CoC over TiTs because for now, too much transformation of Tits are just given to you so they don’t make an interesting objective anymore.

“So, in theory, you could be part of chastia’s army of purity seekers, but date a hot válkosi demon girl on the side, without either party discovering your activities. Of course the larger the party, the more likely they will have spies, so there will be some cases of psychic npcs. lol”
That make me think about the rumor system that have recently been added in Dwarf Fortress. In this game, npc need to see a thing or hear about it from someone to know about it. That would be awesome if you were able to do some thing like that. But from the confession of the developer, this system was really hard to be put in place and is still not perfectly working. I guess a simpler solution would be to imagine plausible scenarios for one npc to learn a specific information and then make a random event where the said npc or an other report you how the thing was learned and then apply the consequence of this learning. This way the exact circumstance of the discovery can remain vague enough so that you don’t need to take into account ton of variable to have something credible and yet it won’t look weird as its something said by a character so he can not know about some stuff, have a bad memory or refuse to tell you everything. Moreover, as the event is random, that mean even if the information is accessible, the event might not start. That make you feel as things must have happened to make the npc learn about what you have done. So even if code side the npc are made as if they were randomly psychic, the player feel like they had to discover the thing in a legit way.